Linguist-Educator Exchange

Connecting the Dots

One of the biggest linguistic offenses by Orton-Gillingham, Wilson, Barton, etc., is the recycling of false information about classical connecting vowel letters. Connecting vowel letters are a thing in language. They are there in Latin and in Greek and in many of the languages that inherited words from them.

Do you know what’s not a thing? *Connectives, that made-up name that the systematic phonics world bestows upon their massacre of accuracy. Below, I’ll take a look at the MYTHS perpetuated in a false, prescriptive, multisensory “Morphology” training handout passed along to me by a colleague, compared to the FACTS supported by actual descriptive evidence from the actual language.

MYTH“Flagging accents in many Latin words are four connectives [sic], i, u, ul, and ol. At no time are they accented [stressed], and usually the accent [stress] falls on the vowel directly ahead of them.”

FACTS
Connectors are single vowels, period. Their proper linguistic term is connecting vowel letter, not *connective. As the term indicates, it’s a Vowel Letter, period.

While the <i> in radiation is a connecting vowel letter, note that the stress doesn’t fall on the preceding vowel, but on the following one. Phonics can’t even cherry-pick decent examples to support its lies. The <i> in companion is not a connector, but part of the <ion> suffix. Vocabulary has a <ule> suffix — the same <ule> suffix that we see in nodule or ridicule. Just because it’s not word final in vocabulary — and its <e> is replaced by the <ary> that follows it — doesn’t mean it’s not a suffix.

It’s inelegant to invent a *<ul> connector when you already have a <ule> suffix that can be followed by another suffix. Once, this OG person — an acolyte of the late Diana Hanbury King, who spread these “connective” lies as much as anyone — tried to mansplain to me where Diana got her information. I stopped him. “She didn’t get it from the language itself, and that’s all that matters. I don’t care how famous the person she’s quoting is; that person is also wrong.”

You can teach lies on the shoulders of giants. They’re still lies. They’re just giant lies.

Another time, an OG woman wrote me to ask whether the <i> in likelihood or in beautiful was a connector, and how to know. I told her to do word sums and figure it out.

If the <u> in continual is a connector — which it is, etymologically speaking — then how do you explain the stem continue? How do you explain the virtue that’s in virtuous, or the value in evaluate, O Phonics?

Yeah, I thought so. You can’t.

Here’s the best one: redolent has the structure < red + ol + ent >, in which the <red> is a pre-vocalic allomorph of <re->; we also see it in redundant and redact. The <ent> is obviously a suffix. That leaves ONLY the <ol> to be the base element. You can’t have a word constructed as *prefix + connector + suffix. A connector vowel must follow a base; it cannot follow a prefix. That <ol> base denotes ‘smell.’ It also makes an appearance in the compound olfactory, and it is cousin to odor.

Hydrangeas are always redolent of Portugal for me.

What is the purpose of lying when the truth is this beautiful?

MORE FACTSConnecting vowel letters from Latin are <i>, <e>, and <u>, which are Latin’s three highest vowels. The fact that they are high vowels matters, because it is the vowel height that causes co-articulatory palatization in so many words, like actual and sensuous and graduate, or special and anxious and righteous. That last one is a hybrid, by the way. A native English word with Latiny aspirations.

A connecting vowel letter in Latin may connect a base to a base (cornucopia), a base to a suffix (facial), or a suffix to a suffix: (malicious). All connectors may be syllabic — <u> and <e> reliably are — (actual, ambiguous, sacrifice, museum). The <i> may also be nonsyllabic (partial, spacious), but it can have a palatizing effect on the preceding consonant.

The Greek connecting vowel letter is <o>, and it’s always syllabic. It may be stressed, as in photography, or it may be unstressed, as in photograph. We don’t use the <o> connector when the second base element starts with a vowel letter: <pseud + onym>, <ped + iatr + ic + ian>.

A connector vowel behaves like a vowel suffix in that it can replace a replaceable <e>:

MORE MYTHS
Phonics builds upon its crumbling foundation by offering syllables like <tion>, <ture>, <cial>, <cious>, and calling them *suffixes, or by taking pieces out of the middle of base elements, like the <du> in educate.

MORE FACTSDo the word sums yourself. and you’ll see.

Here’s the thing I don’t understand: why does Phonics put all this effort into screeching about how much word structure matters, only to then spread lies about how words are structured?

If you have handouts in your file cabinet that talk about *<ul> and *<ol> and *<ci> and *<du> and the like, go feed your shredder.

Systematic phonics’ treatment of connector vowels is always redolent of lies and misapprehensions.

Gina: Thank you for deepening my understanding of connecting vowels.
I did chuckle at this, “If you have handouts in your file cabinet that talk about * and * and * and * and the like, go feed your shredder.” I have! Thanks for sharing, Mary McBride